In preparation for v2.3, I'm testing out the various new gameplay features and improvements. And what better way to do that than to put myself up against 9 random civilizations from the Steam workshop...

Published on Sunday, June 11, 2017 By Frogboy In GalCiv III Dev Journals

Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade is the future of Galactic Civilizations but we haven't forgotten about the hundreds of thousands of players who play the base game. We are busy working on version 2.3 which should be coming out soon as part of a major update to both the base game and Crusade. This article details some of the highlighted areas we're focusing on.

Published on Sunday, June 11, 2017 By Frogboy In GalCiv III Dev Journals

With the Steam Summer sale coming up, we wanted to make sure that the base game of GalCiv III gets a nice refresh. It's proving difficult because while GalCiv III: Crusade is sold as an "expansion pack" to GalCiv III, under the covers it's more like a sequel.

Published on Thursday, June 8, 2017 By Island Dog In Ashes of the Singularity News

Juggernauts and a Brand New Campaign Arrive in v2.3Dominate the battlefield with two brand new tier 4 warships and experience the fully voiced "Genesis" campaign

Let's take a Quick Look at these Terrifying Tier 4 units:

PHC - The Leonidas A heavy Dreadnought destroyer, this ship boasts the most powerful weapon ever mounted on a construct. It can tear Dreadnoughts apart and stand up to assaults by using its rail cannons and auto cannons for defense. The high cost is worth all of the heavy firepower of this Juggernaut; when it joins the war, you'd better find a way to deal with it quickly.

Substrate - The Nest of the Queen This massive warship summons an entire army of frigates to overwhelm the enemy with the support of rapidly-replacing assault and repair drones. The on-board shield generator makes this Juggernaut difficult to kill, marking it as a truly terrifying opponent on the battlefield.

Brand new, fully voiced campaignIn "Genesis," a new entity born of hubris and malice appears to threaten Post-humanity and Substrate alike. You'll get to play as members of both the PHC and the Substrate in this 6-mission storyline that introduces the Juggernaut units and allies old enemies in order to take down the entity that threatens to tear the galaxy apart.

The existing campaign has also received some revisions You'll have access to ships and orbitals that you weren't able to access before in the older missions, and the maps have been adjusted to make more sense. If you thought that the higher level difficulties were too easy before, get ready for a challenge - the AI has been improved so that it's no walk in the park!

v2.3 is now available and waiting in your Steam client To see the full list of changes, please check the changelog below.

For more information on Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, please visit www.ashesgame.com.

v2.3 Changelog:

Juggernauts

We are excited to launch our new class of units: The Juggernauts. The Substrate Nest of the Queen and PHC Leonidas bring destruction to a whole new level; Juggernauts will be many times more powerful than Dreadnoughts and will be the ultimate late game weapon. Don't expect to see Juggernauts in your average match as their cost is substantial, but when a Juggernaut is fielded, serious firepower is needed to stop them in their tracks.

The Leonidas and Nest of the Queen are now available from the Advanced Assembly and Dread Launch

Juggernauts also cost Quanta over time to produce

Rather than being capped at level 5 like Dreadnoughts, Juggernauts can level up infinitely. Each time a Juggernaut ranks up, it automatically receives a 5% bonus to health and damage.

Both are devastating against all ground targets, but can be countered with air units.

The Leonidas is a heavy Dreadnought destroyer, boasting the most powerful weapon ever mounted on a construct. It can tear apart Dreadnoughts and has rail cannons and auto cannons for defense.

The Nest of the Queen summons an entire army of frigates to overwhelm the enemy with support of with assault drones, repair drones and a shield regenerator. Frigates and drones are rapidly replaced in combat, making the Queen truly terrifying to encounter.

Campaigns

Genesis

2.3 comes with Episode 3 of the story-driven campaign which introduces the Leonidas and Nest of the Queen. Genesis features 6 new fully voiced missions in what will be our most challenging campaign to date, we’ve put a great deal of effort to make sure "Much Harder" is no walk in the park, even despite having access to the two new Juggernauts.

Imminent Crisis & Memories

In preparation for the new Genesis campaign, the original campaigns have been adjusted to improve the user experience and update them for the additional units and buildings introduced in Escalation. For most new players, Imminent Crisis will be their introduction to Ashes of the Singularity so we wanted to improve the first impressions. The changes done to these campaigns is far too extensive to list here, but you can view the full campaign changelog here.

Maps

New Maps: Seginus, Mizar, Achernar, Lyra and Eltanin and added for free. Thanks to Luxlupus for his work on these!

Kralon, Regulus, Seginus and Mizar added to automatch map pool

Oneiros removed from Skirmish and Multiplayer list

Ganymede

Ganymede had too little Radioactives which limited strategic diversity and unit flexibility. It also had a huge concentration of Metal in the corners which made the middle of the map less valuable and too pushing for a player who gets locked out of the corner. These changes will affect the Memories Campaign Mission.

Changes applied:

Added additional Radioactives deposits into the middle of the map

Spread Metal Deposits out from the corners

Seton

Seton was unfair for certain teams and players due to having access to different amounts of resources. Its pathways were also extremely narrow. We are adjusting it to make it fair for every player. Thanks to Luxlupus for his work updating Seton.

Changes applied:

Both teams now have symetrical resource layouts

Every player now has access to the same amount of resources.

Increased the width of the pathways to ease congestion

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where pathing was being disrupted on the north of Maurn

Fixed an issue where the Substrate orbital, Regenerate, would not heal units with full health

Reverted an unintentional change to the colouring of the Logistics text

“Rush Build” now properly doubles resource drain in exchange for double production speed.

Quality of Life

Quanta income is displayed to two decimal places. (One Relay is +0.25 Quanta income)

Added menu option to re-enable right-click form armies.

Added a map option to disable Juggernauts

Reduced amount of data used when launching the game, which may improve startup time for some users

Exterminator Turret screen shake effect removed

Balance Changes

Intentions2.25 update has put balance and strategic diversity in a nice spot, and as a result balance changes was only a small focus for 2.3. The following balance changes are aimed at tweaking some of the under performing and over performing outliers.

Cruisers

Eradicator

The Eradicator’s inability to target buildings was contrived and unnecessary given the huge tech requirements, cost and slow movement speed. We are allowing the Eradicator to target buildings to make it more flexible.

Main gun can now target buildings

Drone Hive

The Drone Hive was overshadowing the Avenger against Frigates. Now the Avenger is much cheaper and faster.

Drove Hive Metal cost increased from 310 to 350

Sapper

There was no reason for the Sapper to be as painfully slow as it was.Sapper movement speed and acceleration increased to match the Engineer.

Dreadnoughts

Dreadnoughts were the only PHC units to have an energy bar, yet only their special abilities required it. This was misleading as their main weapons didn’t require energy to fire, and created problems when Dreadnoughts ran out of energy since PHC have no tool to replenish it. We are removing the energy from PHC Dreadnoughts as it is unnecessary since the abilities already have long cooldowns.

PHC Dreadnoughts no longer have energy

PHC Dreadnought abilities no longer consume energy

The auto cannons on the PHC Dreadnought were under performing as they only had 300 range, which often was not enough to get within range of their targets. We are increasing the range of auto cannons so they can better contribute and make Dreadnoughts less vulnerable to mass Frigates.

All PHC Dreadnoughts auto cannon range increased from 300 to 600

Chronus

The Chronus was under performing

Damage increased from 45 to 60

Overmind

We are lowering the time it takes for The Overmind to replenish its Drones to make it perform more consistently and make it better perform compared to the Drone Hive.

Drone Respawn time reduced from 4 to 2

Savager

The Savager had far too little shields at only 40% of the health, which could be frustrating as Substrate have no way to repair health. Giving the Savager more shields also improves the bonus that the Shield Regeneration upgrade provides.

Health and Shields changed from 10,000/4000 to 7000/7000

Buildings

Exterminator Turret

The Exterminator Turret was underperforming compared to the Pulverizer and Oblivion turrets

Exterminator Turret damage increased from 300 to 375

Shredder Turret

The Shredder turret was over performing and is losing damage and life time on its Drones to compensate.

Shredder Plasma Ball, damage reduced from 400 to 300

Drone life time reduced from 60 seconds to 20

Drone Canister reload increased from 3.5 to 6

Drone Canister minimum range lowered from 250 to 50

Barrager Turret

The Sentinel and Oblivion turrets are supposed to be the long range defenses, it didn't make sense for the Barrager to have as much range as it did. We are removing the air attack from the Smarty and Barrager for mostly cosmetics reasons. Air units have much higher health pools than ground units, so the air damage on a Smarty was negligible, serving only to obscure where the real damage sources were coming from. This clouded the visual clarity, especially since Constables and Smarties used the same rocket projectile. There are plenty of methods to counter air units, Smarties and Barragers attacking air units is just superfluous.

Barrager range lowered from 900 to 800

Barrager and Smarty can no longer target air units

Regenerator

The shield Regeneration rate was negligible and made it not worth the cost. We are increasing its regeneration rate to make it more desirable. This will also affect the Regeneration Projectors on the Overmind and Nest of the Queen

Shields replenished per burst increased from 15 to 45.

Repair Bay

The repair bay was too cheap for how potent it was in synergy with other defenses, especially as how it could repair itself so easily.

Published on Tuesday, June 6, 2017 By Frogboy In GalCiv III Dev Journals

This is a response to the excellent article over at one of my favorite sites, Explorminate. In the article, author Oliver Kiley laments on what he sees as the current unpolished state of the modern 4X market.

“Jupiter’s Forge expands on Offworld Trading Company, taking you to Jupiter’s moon, Io. With this area comes two new factions, a range of new buildings and a whole new way in how to manage resources. Io is a try planet, there is no water to pump and the game will challenge you in a way that makes it feel fresh.” -Chris Wray, wccftech

“If you’re looking to quench your 4X hunger, Crusade makes Galactic Civilizations III one of the more robust, high-quality offerings out there,” USgamer’s Mike Williams writes. “Crusade is everything that an expansion should be. It takes [the base game], sands off the rough edges, and adds new options for a deeper, more strategic experience. The new citizens system offers more late-game options, espionage returns, planetary invasions are more tactical, and alongside the three new races, there’s a Civilization Builder letting you craft your own. If you’re a GalCiv fan, it’s an instant pick-up. If you’re not, this might be the time to pick it up.”

"Crusade is a two-pronged attack against Galactic Civilization III’s status quo,” writes Fraser Brown of PCGamesN. “The first assault takes on nuisances like the hefty UI and the sometimes hard-to-parse research screen. It brings clarity and streamlining. The second is the bolder attack. New races, espionage, citizens and meaningful invasions flesh out the galaxy and chuck in new challenges for good measure.”